Auditory Processing:
The ability to process auditory messages, distinguish between similar sounds or words, separate relevant speech from background noise, and the ability to recall and comprehend what was heard. Auditory processing is not related to hearing loss.
Babbling:
A stage in child development when an infant appears to be experimenting with the sounds of his language (phonemes). Babbling is usually a string of consonant-vowel syllables, such as “mamama.”
Cognition:
The mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehension. These include thinking, knowing, remembering, judging and problem-solving
Discourse:
The way sentences work in sequence to produce coherent stretches of language, such as in conversation, interviews, commentaries, and speeches.
Expressive Language:
The ability to transmit oral, symbolic, or written meaning.
Executive Functioning:
Neurologically-based skills involving mental control and self-regulation. They include the ability to initiate and stop actions, to monitor and change behavior as needed, and to plan future behavior when faced with novel tasks and situation. Executive functions allow us to anticipate outcomes and adapt to changing situations.
Inferences:
Using reasoning to derive logical conclusions from evidence and/or assumptions. The ability to contrast and compare new experiences with prior knowledge is salient to the ability to make inferences in social situations and in understanding text. Inferences matter in reading comprehension because writers omit a lot of what they mean.
Intelligibility:
The ability to be heard and understood
Jargon:
Continuous but unintelligible speech that occurs between the ages of 12 and 18 months. The child is learning to sequence sounds and to imitate conversational speech.
Intonation:
The use of changing pitch to convey syntactic information, such as when asking a question.
Language:
System for communicating ideas and feeling using sounds, gestures, signs or marks
Language Comprehension/Receptive Language:
The ability to understand communication from others, including speech, written text, gestures, or sign language
Larynx:
Valve structure between the trachea (windpipe) and the pharynx (the upper throat) that is the primary organ of voice production.
Metacognition:
The ability to assess one’s own skills, ability or knowledge. It is one of the executive functions.
Morphology:
The system that governs the smallest units of meaning, such as words affixes, suffixes, plural endings, etc.
Phonemes:
A speech sound; any of the distinct units of sound in a language that distinguish one word from another such as the /t/ and /d/ in “pat” and “pad.”
Phonology:
The sound system of a language and the rules that govern the sound combinations.
Phonological Processes:
Techniques used by children to simplify speech when attempting to produce adult words, such as cluster reduction which results in “top” for “stop” or weak syllable deletion such as “nana” for “banana”. When a child uses many different processes or uses processes that are not typically present during speech acquisition, intelligibility may be impaired.
Pragmatics/Social Language:
The system that combines language components in functional and socially appropriate communication.
Prosody:
The rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech.
Semantics:
The way words are used to convey the intended meaning
Speech:
The act of expressing or describing thoughts, feelings, or perceptions by the articulation of words through speech sounds and vocal physiology
Syntax:
The system governing the order and combination of words to form sentences, and the relationships among the elements within a sentence, including noun-verb agreement, punctuation, and sentence structure
Theory of Mind:
The ability to infer the full range of mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions, imagination, emotions, etc.) that cause action. It is the ability to reflect on the contents of one’s own and other’s minds. Difficulty in understanding other minds is a core cognitive feature of autism spectrum conditions.
Vocal Cords/Vocal Folds:
Two folds of tissue located in the larynx that vibrate when air passes over them, producing the sound waves associated with talking